Is business picking up or looking down?

The New Year is now well past the first flush of youth and spring budgets should be in the air. But how are things shaping up in the businesses that get IT solutions into the hands, or at least computer rooms and racks, of most companies? If you are working in a VAR, a reseller, a distributor, systems integrator or consultancy advising on IT purchases, we want to find out how you see the markets shaping up in your neck of the woods.

In particular we would like to find out what you are seeing happening with respect to clients buying patterns. Are budgets still locked down or are your customers beginning to sign the purchase orders? If your customers are splashing the cash, where is the money being spent? Servers, storage or networking? Applications or management?

Beyond hardware, software and installation services, are you getting growing interest from potential customers asking after managed services, “Cloud” solutions or other forms of outsourcing or do they still want to keep the jewels locked behind the company’s doors? Let us know.

Turning things around we are also keen to find out how the IT vendors are working with you to help reach out to clients. Which vendors are stepping up to the plate to make it easier for you to get out and sell and which are wrapped in processes that hold you back? Let us know where there are margins being made and which vendors make life simplest. Tell us, in total anonymity, how well the likes of HP, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, EMC, Symantec, Cisco, CA and their peers are doing to enable you to get new IT solutions into the computer rooms of your customers.